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Malaysia’s online environment is the safest in Southeast Asia for display ads, with only 2.2% of online ad impressions flagged being featured alongside content that are a risk to brand safety.

According to Integral Ad Science’s (IAS) latest Media Quality Report H2 2017, the brand safety risk for all buy types in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan is 3.5%, beating the global benchmark of 7.9% for the second half of 2017. Singapore’s online environment (2.5%) was among the safest countries in the region, compared to Indonesia which had the highest risk of brand safety (9.1%).

The report stated that over a third of the risky impressions in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan fall within the offensive language and controversial news category. This can be attributed to an influx of premium publisher coverage around offensive language and controversial news which is classified as moderate risk.

Meanwhile, Malaysia (68.7%) and Singapore (64.5%) were ranked the top two for highest viewability rates, compared to 58.9% in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Once again, the region performed better than the global viewability rate benchmark of 55.8%. According to the report, Malaysia’s ranking proves that industry efforts on improving overall viewability in that country have paid off. Meanwhile, only 53.2% of the display ads in Indonesia are viewable.

In the second half of last year, Singapore (20.7%) and Hong Kong (14.0%) had the higher non-optimised fraud risk across all buy types in the region. This was due to ad fraudsters following the movement of digital spend and being more active in advanced markets, the report stated. Meanwhile, Indonesia had a fraud risk of 3.0%. Non-optimised fraud levels are representative of campaigns where no fraud mitigation strategy is in place.

According to Niall Hogan, MD, Southeast Asia, IAS the report shows advertisers, as well as buyers and sellers of digital media, the importance of looking at Southeast Asia on a country level. He added that while there are low levels of fraud in most Southeast Asian markets, Singapore has the highest most likely because fraudsters are chasing the higher CPMs that a market such as Singapore commands.

“It is only by looking at their own data, in the different markets that they advertise in, that advertisers will be able to identify potential problems, and ultimate make changes that improve efficiencies and save them money,” Hogan said.

IAS’ brand risk metrics characterise the safety of the environment in which ads appear. Impressions are flagged for appearing alongside content such as adult content, alcohol content, hate speech, illegal downloads, illegal drugs, offensive language and violence, which pose a risk to the brand’s safety.